Vampire
by swan-scones
Summary: "That's the way love works - exactly the same way as selfishness." The sequel to 'Hopscotch'. Young!Murdoc, OC, love triangle.
1. Chapter 1

Twelve days had passed and he hadn't heard anything, at all. He reconnected the house phone in his bedroom, beside the bed on the floor, and it sat there like a plastic red urn among memories of Pris, and the dark stains on the carpet, and gluey dried tissues.

He spent the days wasting away in his lust, something cold and stale like death creeping towards him slowly, and settling on his chest, waiting, weighing on his heart. This was what told him that he might have loved her. He could not continue to do nothing, because it was exhausting him. He had to move, get out, maybe go and find her.

The world seemed to be so much more beautiful now he was blind in one eye. The nurses had cooed over him, which had been nice – Dad had called an ambulance after finding him screaming on the kitchen floor, clutching his eyes weeping water and blood and something thick and gooey and yellowish. He could still remember the taste as it dribbled between the gap in his lips, like a liquefied old penny. They had offered him surgery, but he had forgotten to care at that point, the world had ended.

He stood up. Outside the evening was waning to night, softly, romantically, lilac to a tender navy blue. It felt like a film. The world seemed to be blushing and singing and simpering all to hurt him, how cruel it seemed, to be the perfect setting for a kiss after dark or secret sex in the park. He stared for a moment and remembered her one day, walking to the house down that very road in view of his window all dressed in black, her whitish hair glowing, the cigarette leaving a trail of smoke behind her like a hot gun – a cowboy wielding his madness, waiting, ready for a brawl.

"Pris," he said to the room. He put on his jacket, the new leather one he'd bought to impress her. He went out of the house. If she would speak to anyone surely it would be her Mother? Surely. Her Mother would have heard something, a letter, a phone call, something. He had to know, he had to know. He was sure she was hurt, something bad had happened. He couldn't go on without at least knowing he had tried. He was imagining her face through the car window, crying, Hannibal's hand grasping the back of her neck, stuck there with his clammy evil. The world rolled passed him as he walked like a psychedelic nightmare as he walked. Her house wasn't far.

When he arrived the door wasn't locked; he checked the handle and almost walked straight inside, but he waited. The day was cooling around him, and a draft curled its cold fingers up his shirt, the back of his spine. Then a light flipped on, and he saw the small silhouette of Billy.

The latch was clicked on, he heard.

Billy did not show his bonny bony face. He spoke to the door.

"I know it's you, Murdoc," he said in his quiet, seductive voice. "I can't talk to you. Pris said –"

"I don't care about that now, I just – is she alright? Has she written to y'Mum? Or called, or anythin'?"

"Mum asked her to call her to let us know she was fine, but she hasn't called. She wrote a letter but it was very short. She – she's in London, you know. She's getting married to your brother."

His eye seemed to jump in its socket. "Married?"

"Yeah, she wants to get married to your brother, she said."

Murdoc stood paralysed, his mouth popped open, his hands shaking in his pockets. "And – and did – didn't she mention – well, I'd have thought she might've mentioned me."

"She didn't."

"Can I have the address? I need her address. Please, Billy, I'll do anything," he insisted, jamming his foot between the door. "I won't leave. Just – find the letter. Find it and tell me the address."

"I'm not supposed to talk with you."

"Then _don't_ – just get the letter!" Murdoc snarled.

How strangely easy it was to love someone so obedient. Billy went and returned with the envelope, passed it though the letter box to him, and locked the door.

The letter he wrote went:

_Dear Pris,_

_I know you might not get this, but I had to try. I know you're gone and that's all my fault, and I know you probably can't call or talk to me. If you can, do. I've got our phone in my room and I'll make sure I pick it up. I want to know you're OK. _

_I want you to know that I think that I love you, and I didn't mean to fuck it all up, I really didn't, but I love you and you had to know. And now you do. I promise that, and I know it sounds really stupid, completely stupid, but I am going to wait. I don't know how long it'll take. I don't think I care much more. I don't care about anything other than you. We haven't even got any food in because he took all of the money, but it doesn't even bother me._

_Please just don't get married. I'm not saying we'll get married, but I am saying, I know that isn't what you want._

_Murdoc_

* * *

Pris' stomach was gorged full, and sick. The baby surveyed her and ate her with it's little black eyes, hard and undeveloped like a prawn's. It ate her with it's toothless, gumless mouth, sapped her, drank her, gormless and greedy, mad, unthinking, neither dead or alive, like a ghost, a demon, developing nails and skin and claws and a little heart, dark and solid and mottled like a tooth cavity.

The letter from Murdoc made her weep like nothing before in her life – more than the last time Hannibal had fucked her, and his orgasm jutted through him and choked him and folded him and he told her, licking her face like a dog gone insane with a wet pink boner, "Now we'll have a little baby. A little little baby, yours and mine. I'll always be in you now."

_I'll always be in you_. She could feel him inside, like a virus changing and growing in it's intelligence. She beat her stomach once with her fist, folded the letter, and kissed the air.

She could not go home. But she could hope and dream for Murdoc, and pray to God and the Devil that he would be saved from this, and have a dream.

She slept that night while her small internal vampire sucked her dry, while Hannibal's thing sucked her dry. The night did not seem to end, but she knew somewhere another day began.

* * *

**A/N: For Sara – I love you! **

**If this kills or betters Hopscotch, I don't know, but inspiration struck, Pris never leaves me! I hope everyone enjoyed this, I've missed all of my Hopscotch readers. Please let me know what you think.**


	2. Chapter 2

Pris had realised months ago now that the world has little variety, and so much consistency, that there is little need to travel it at all. The Grand Canyon, vast, desolate, aching orange stone humming, forcing gritty tears through the wind that carried its sand and salt – a lonely and painful and breathtaking thing – was no different than a boy kicking stone into a mud ditch in London, the dirt rising to nothing, leaving tears.

She was stood outside of the Doctor's surgery, trying to enjoy the sun and avoid that rubbery smell of hygiene that always hung in the air. The boy kicked another stone. He was with his pregnant Mother. Today was the anti-natal day, or something. She didn't know. But it was time to say something about this now. Almost 6 months pregnant, Pris had not told a single soul. Her stomach now was thicker than her own head, like some strange elephant girl. Or an experiment. _No chemo Doctor, let us wait. No chemo. We'll wait, and see how big. How big? How big can this cancer get? _And now she hated herself.

Her whole being spoke of death, dying, rather than life. She hadn't the money, or the courage, to go out and buy hair dye – the white blonde colour had grown out past her ears now, the oranges, reds and golds turning her hair the colour of the dying light of a sunset. Every shower, every time she combed her hair, washed her hands, she felt as if preparing herself for a coffin. This cancer was killing her.

The woman next to her looked beautiful in her pregnancy, round and whole with light coloured hair, beige skin and a red blotch on either cheek, like a human victoria sponge; fat, delicious, vanilla and strawberry, the filling set just right. She was smiling gently at her son the way they do in Pampers' TV adverts, and she had all the gear. Books about bringing up baby, and diagrams, and one of those space hopper things, and a little sort of pump thing, and proper maternity clothes clearly from a nice range in a supermarket. Not her boyfriend's old t-shirt with 'Fuck You' written in black scrawl across the front, and jogging bottoms. She noticeably avoided eye-contact throughout the few minutes they were stood outside – not that Pris blamed her.

The door opened and the receptionist told them to sit down and wait, and the nurse would be with them shortly. The nurse, after walking into their little room with a massive rucksack of vaginal prodders and squeezers, eyed Pris innocently and then assumed, "Hello there, what's your name? Have you recently changed practises? I don't think we've had you here before!"

Pris didn't know how to reply for a good thirty seconds, and then finally said, "No."

And the nurse flicked back her cropped, soft hair – so young to be reeking of depression and placenta – "You haven't changed practises?"

"I haven't got a practise."

And then she was sent to wait for the Doctor and register at the practise, which lasted around, by her meticulous counting, thirty-seven minutes. The doctor here was nice, with a long, thick face that reminded her of an Indian tribal leader, calling spirits through a smog of dark smoke. He told her to sit, which she did, carefully navigating her tummy around the tabletop.

"So you've filled out your registration forms?"

"Yeah."

"O.K., well first of all we'll have to wait for your details to upload on our system, and then I can look at your medical records."

"Yeah."

After a few minutes of sitting quietly he asked, "And so what you are here for today? A routine check-up? Have you had any issues?"

_No chemo, doctor. No chemo._

"Yeah, just a check-up."

"Well that won't take too long and you can be on your way, it'll be the scanner that'll take the time. How far along are you?"

_How big can this cancer get?_

"About... like, about six months, maybe?"

He frowned at her. "Are you unsure about your dates?"

"I can't remember."

Again, more silence. The room was decorated with a little plastic spider plant, a plastic-coated bed with matching curtain, and a big leather chair for the doctor. Opposite him was a little plastic chair. Pris was now dying for the taste or smell of engines, metal, something – the whole place seemed so sterile she felt like a freakish creature in it, being so dominantly fertilised.

"There's no record of your first scan. Or, even of your pregnancy, Priscilla."

"I've just been really busy. I couldn't make any time ta go to the doctor, or whatever."

A really warm, vegetablely taste started to grow in her mouth, across the length of her tongue, and she knew any moment she would vomit.

"Are you quite alright?"

She could hear her heart in both ears, as though it had leapt up into her throat and threatened to burst her eardrums with its power. She could feel her head slipping down, couldn't stop it. Gnats seemed to be swarming in front of her eyes. "I – I don't want any chemo," she mumbled.

"Chemo? Chemotherapy?"

"No chemo."

She could sense her huge slightness, how tiny her head felt now. And then her head hit the desk like a small balloon, falling from the hands of a playing child.

* * *

Hannibal was in the nursery, in blue overalls splattered a garish sunflower yellow. He looked down at the length of his body and grinned. Of course they had wanted a surprise – who'd want to know the gender? It felt like an emotional caesarean, cutting some of that little life away before it ran its natural course. Yellow was a good colour, a happy one. If it was a boy he could paint cars, planes, things like that, across the walls. And if it was a girl, maybe flowers, big red ones, poppies, and bumblebees.

The baby was going to be the making of them. And besides, yellow was a brilliant colour! The colour of Pris' old bedroom, where the child had been hypothetically spoken of so many times, and hypothetically loved. And, more to the point, where it had been created!

He would not tell the baby how it had truly been made, because the reality itself to him was a watercolour masterpiece – without definitive lines, just blurred colours, she had curled into a ball afterwards, hands over her face, it had been tears of joy!_ I'm so happy, _her lemur-like body mimed to him, the tears seeping through her long, manly fingers and shining as they dried around her knuckles.

He tried to forget that yellow was the colour of sick, of piss, and he tried to forget the look on Pris' face afterwards, and how the globs of yellow vomit had ran down her chin after she'd missed the sink after it had happened, and how her hair had been glowing a dangerous, dead yellow under the lights like the leaves of a poisoned tree, or toxic berries, or freakish yellow ladybirds, or cough syrup.

He dropped the roller into the tin of paint for a moment and stretched, and just as he was about to totter off for a tea break, the phone rang. He ran to it to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Hans." The tender tremble of love was in her voice.

"Hello baby mama!" He answered brightly, "How are ya? Everything's O.K., yeah?"

"N-no," she told him. "I'm in the hospital. They're goin' to do a scan on me, and see the, erm, the –"

"The baby?" He chirped, "Oh my God, I'll be on my way!"

She suddenly exclaimed, "No!"

"What?"

"Don't, I need to be alone, they said. You can't."

"Oh, I see. Women's things. Well, call when you're done and I'll come to get you, honeybee."

"O.K., see you tonight."

"Bye, sweets!"

He went quickly back to begin painting again. Soon enough the baby would be here, and how blissful their lives would be. If it didn't have a painted nursery how could it ever be happy? Things needed to be whole, completed now. And soon they would be.

* * *

Pris had the cold blue slime rubbed off her stomach with a wet cloth, and the midwife, Mimi, smiled kindly at her. She was a sweet, small thing that reminded her of a field mouse. She had a slight upturned nose, little brown eyes, and a gentle weight of browny blonde hair tied in a short ponytail. She was pretty and young and Pris gazed at her longingly.

"So how did it feel then?" She asked eagerly. How carefully she rubbed the gluttonous bump free of its sticky coating, almost caressed it. "Your baby, eh?"

"It's nice," she lied.

The midwife watched her intently, smiled, desperate to conceal the fact that clearly intervention was going to be needed. The girl, and it was a _girl_, was strange.

With her abnormally long legs and fingers – like antenna and femurs, gangly, brainless, clumsy, weak – hanging loose over the edges she seemed like a gigantic insect sprawled over the bed. She lay with her legs wide open and twitching, nervously kicking when she was touched. Her eyes were nothing but large, black absorptions of light, draining the world as they stared back into hers. She had not shaved any of her body hair in months; inch after inch of red hair was stood on end all over her, like the sensitive bristles on a tibia, waiting to capture danger, sharp in the cold. Her skin was so pale only under harsh light was it clear stretch marks were splintering her legs and stomach; the veins on an exoskeleton. It all made sense. She seemed to be made of nothing on the inside, after all. The expanse stomach didn't change that. Normally Mimi had associated pregnant women with flowers, huge blooms of pink petals, strong and leaning towards sunlight.

This girl was more like a blackfly.

"I'm glad you think so. You know, you haven't been treating baby best. You got to make sure you eat a healthy diet, first and foremost."

The worst thing was the nauseating thinness of her. In her face her features were chasms, pocketed into her bones. Perhaps it was the bones, thin, delicate, warping her body into a pointed, inhumanly angular structure, that made her appear to insectile.

"I do," she lied. "I get my five-a-day and I do smoothies made o'banana and that."

Her voice was so low and lethargic it even sounded like a low buzzing.

"Do you, now?"

"What?" Pris snapped, though her voice was weak. Her brows hacked down into her sunken face and her lips drew back past her teeth. Slithered, almost.

"Well, if you were eating properly you wouldn't be so thin, sweetie."

Pris grabbed the hem of Hannibal's t-shirt and yanked it down over the lump, gnashing her teeth. "I'm perfectly fine." She heaved herself off the bed and began waddling away.

"Wait, Pris! Where are you going? You need to stay here!"

The midwife made a grab for her – Pris gave her a quick scratch and kept walking. Things seemed to be moving hyper fast now. The midwife was clutching her arm, the red grooves on it blatant on her angel-delight skin. She grimaced, and begged, "Is there somewhere for you to go? Someone for you? Anyone you can call?"

"There's someone I can call, yeah." Pris mumbled. In all these months, she had not forgotten the letter.

* * *

**A/N: THE RETURN OF PRIS.**

**I want to thank every single person that loved her, that loved Hopscotch, and that kept me going throughout my writing last year. **

**I've been going through a really shit time, I'll be honest. One day I went back, and I read the reviews for this fic, and it made me feel a faith and a love for expression again, and the courage to raise a little voice. And it made me miss Pris, Hannibal and little Murdoc, who were my first creative outlet, a little dirty secret and joy.**

**This is for my reviewers. I can't tell you what a gift you've given me.**

**I hope everyone enjoys this – a fully fledged sequel, and by request, MORE FULLY FLEDGED YOUNG MURDOC. He will be here soon! **

**Love to you all,**

**Sophie **


	3. Chapter 3

How much blood would a flea suck?

The answer, most likely, is that it would suck and suck and suck, gorge itself, and continue, and continue, and double its own body weight, pressure its gut into collapsing onto its knees, then to the floor, immobilising itself, then more, to the point that it cannot see, it cannot breathe, it chokes itself, and still more, its dying. And eventually, more liquid than life, it bursts apart.

Hannibal could not quite tell what the insect on the window sill was, but it did seem like a flea. He had cut his finger on a piece of splintered wood as he was sanding it down, and now the little dark thing bathed itself in the tiny droplet of his blood, and drank. It seemed to be growing.

"Cunt," he called it. He squashed it. Ugly thing, nasty intent. Although he had known butterflies to drink blood from time to time, at least they looked pretty doing so.

Pris was sleeping in their room, and he was still hard at the DIY, now working on the windows in the living room, painting the frames, sanding the sills. Soon enough he would buy fresh flowers for a little display in a vase. How serene life would be, the pregnant wife sleeping, the father making the home. He loved it so. He wiped the dead thing from his fingers and washed them.

_Easy_, he thought. Now it was forgotten. It rolled into the plughole nothing but black grit, sort of like the stuff that crumbled beneath Pris' eyes when they were younger, and she'd been laughing or crying too much. Mascara. Mostly it happened after she'd been crying. And God, she cried the last time, that one time.

In her room? Had it been in her room? He couldn't remember which room, but her skin had looked overly bright, contrasted again the wall she had been lying against. Deep red walls, like her living room, the colour of a beaten vulva. Why did he remember her lying against the wall? She had been in the foetal position, and she was naked, she was completely naked all but her dressing gown draped over her, soft and black like a body bag. She was curled up, and her hands were all over her face, the nails biting into her forehead.

It had been such a horrible dream, he reminded himself. A _dream_.

He walked upstairs. She was lying facing the ceiling spread eagled, asleep, so tranquil and bloated, it was beautiful.

She had cuts in her forehead.

* * *

Jacob Niccals was lying across the sofa in the living room. A strange, sewery coloured goo was dribbling from the corner of his mouth, his one leg was bent crookedly across the floor, he had his hair stuck to his forehead with a kind of garlic oil scented sticky man-grease produced from his hairline. Murdoc mused for a moment how satisfying it might be to kick that wonky leg, but then decided against it.

For the past few months they had been feeding entirely on chips and supermarket tub noodles that tasted like boiled, salted mushrooms. He shook his head and shrugged his jacket sharply up over his shoulders.

"We need some proper food."

"I've got a quid for t'chippy," his father answered.

"No, I mean, food. We're getting ill."

"I can't afford anything," was the reply. Jacob's voice was scratchy like the prongs of a fork sliding against a butter knife.

Murdoc turned and shook his head, his eye hurting, and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Perhaps it was the partial blindness, but he seemed genuinely a rather handsome thing now. Yes, with the dull, squished, vibrant red eye of a filleted fish, but he liked this look. The longer hair and the thinner face made him look a lot older, perhaps eighteen, and rough and bad like something from Mad Max. He grinned at himself, winked. Why, he did not know, but he had always fantasised about her sort of, swooning at that. Simpering, even. _Oh Murdoc, you're so charming!_

He thought of her every day, wanked twice. It wasn't a bad sort of wank though – what he liked to think as a rather flattering one. It wasn't just few minutes of closed eyes and mad jittering picturing her being humped into insanity – as it was usually. He liked to think of kissing her, holding her first. Every time he remembered her he hated himself for not thoroughly touching every bit of her body, the little patches of smooth skin on the inside of her elbows, the delicate blue vein that wound up from her thigh and split into two, like the cold tongue of a viper, on the curve of her bum. Or that delta of bones on her pelvis, or the elegant, milky prairie of her stomach, flat desert land.

He wondered how her body might fit into a wedding dress, just then. The picture was strange, Pris with the demented, pale blue eyes, the shaved white hair, the man hands? She'd look ridiculous. Seeing as she had not replied, he'd wish her well for the wedding, and say yes, yes I hope you have a wonderful day, you'll look like shit in a dress, because being nice, being honest and – yes, that's right, he wouldn't stop himself from admitting it now, _being in love_ doesn't fucking suit you; it makes you look ten times uglier than you already did.

The phone was still sat in his room, the plastic becoming painfully hot in the sunlight through the window. He checked it for messages as often as was physically possible, nonetheless – although if it rang he wasn't sure he'd even have the balls to pick up anymore.

* * *

When she woke he was lying above her, the length of his body stretched across the bed. His nose was on her face, on her forehead, sniffing thickly, like a dog to a bitch on heat. And how she longed, longed to be on heat; inside, though full, she felt cold.

Hannibal's breath now seemed, for the first in a long time, something welcomed on her face, warm breeze, like summer at the seaside. He was pressing her down into the mattress with his weight, and sort of slathering, his teeth slightly grinding against her cheekbone.

"Hans?" she asked meekly.

"What're these cuts, on your face? Someone's cut your face."

"What cuts?" she begged him, pushing the flat of her hand against his shoulder. "Please, can you just let me sit up?"

"But you've been hurt," he snapped. "Who did this? Tell me!"

She cringed.

"I don't know, I probably did it by accident, to myself."

His eyes finally opened slowly and gazed into her. She could see the white little pellet of his canine tooth against her own face, pushing into the flesh, and she gulped.

"Please, Hans, darling, please. Ya really heavy on me."

He seemed determined to continue this however, desperate to. She was acutely aware of that tooth, and the look in his eye now, hard and shiny and empty – large but deformed, the way she imagined the eyes of the little thing, weak and pluckable and crunchy like a prawn's eye.

"And so you say you did this to yourself?"

"I must've, babe."

"And you did it when, when did you do it?"

"I was sleeping, I think."

"You accidently scratched yourself in your sleep?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't me?"

"No."

"No," he nodded, and then swallowed, and finally sat back. This reminded her of the old days, after they'd done it, and he'd sit back and scrub under his face and around the back of his neck with his fingers and forearm and stared at her, panting, the sweat glimmering on the supple curve of his back. _You're sweet, Pris, _he used to tell her, and then kiss her, and hand her that slimy wet pouch, full up, smelling sour. _Bin this, sweet, will ya?_

She watched him for a moment and sighed, sitting up. She was beginning to forget everything, the way it used to be. The lump was pressing onto her thighs now as she sat, and left two circular red blotches of heat, so cold it burnt.

"Sometimes," he said distantly, staring out of the window. "Sometimes, I feel like – I dunno – like I did summat bad."

Pris noticed had the suffocating epiphany that this room had also been sampled yellow – thick streaks of mustard, sunflower, lemon and cheesy coloured paint had been lashed onto the bare wall in equal lengths for cosmetic comparison. She had no idea when he had done this, but it hardly mattered, seeing as he wasted his days filling and painting and sanding and polishing and sampling things about the house.

The yellow of her bedroom had been a more buttercup yellow; and she knew this was what he was attempting to imitate. She shuddered.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, like I'm bad. Like I've done something."

Pris waited for a moment, but he did not speak again. The part of her, the part that was still her, that still remained, inside, not yet drained by the thing, was desperate for her revenge. She wanted to hurt him, to play. She settled now to simply push him a tad – she had realised long ago now that she had no physical control over him, but perhaps she could claw back a piece of his heart and chew it up.

"I don't think you mean it to be bad," she whispered.

"What?" His voice came out soft and careful, as though he'd spoken the final word of a sonnet. He turned his head slightly, at a strange angle, so that she could see the muscles working in his jaw as he began grinding his teeth.

"I don't think you meant it to be bad."

"Meant _what_?"

"I – "

"_What_ are you on about?"

He snarled at her, and then vaulted up into a standing position, grabbed her ankles and yanked them up into the air, so that even the humungous pregnant weight of her arse was pulled from underneath her, her arms flew back and her head smacked down against the wall.

"Hans!"

"_What_ do you mean?" Two of his meaty hands, now covered in wall painted rather than spray canned graffiti paint, held her down hard, so hard that she could feel the tight pressure of a spring, hard metal in the stuffing, digging in. The one hand came up and pinched her cheek between overgrown nails. She could feel a warm well of blood tasting the air, giving scent.

"Get off me, you dick!"

"Explain," he elongated his vowels, the way he had used to when he said Murdoc's name.

"I don't know, I was just trying to help!"

"Don't make it a repeat performance, you little slut," he hissed at her, and then walked away.

Within a few minutes she could hear him whistling Snow White's _Whistle While You Work_. The paint roller was running against the wall.

"Did you want a cup of coffee, Pris, angel?"

She dabbed the cut on her cheek with her fingers.

"No, thanks," she answered, entirely at loss for words, and even more so for understanding of what, exactly, was going through his mind.

A few minutes later she had locked the door, staunched the blood on her face, and sat on the edge of the bed, with the letter open in her hands. How sweetly infantile the script was, capital letters in the wrong places, the I's dotted with huge empty circles. I think that I love you.

She decided even the thought of it was enough. He kept the phone in the bathroom, because she couldn't access that room alone; he always insisted on helping her to the toilet, helping her boil the kettle, rubbing her feet. She hauled herself up by grabbing onto the bedside table and tugging violently. He had made all the bedrooms perfect, furniture, paint, carpet, everything – although the rest of the house was hollowed out. She could hear him clunking around because the only owned a radio, sofa, little plastic table, 'borrowed' gas stove and mini fridge. Everything echoed. The place was as barren inside as she wished to be.

She had managed, finally, and so plodded into the bathroom, clutching the letter; although she had memorised the number written on the back just in case.

She dialled it. The tone rang once, twice, three times, four.

"Hello?"

* * *

**A/N: And there we go, the end of the third chapter!**

**Sorry for the cliffhanger ;) and the lack of Young Muds – I promise the next chapter will be purely Murdoc-based, however.**

**Thanks and love to Guest and Super gazellian for their lovely reviews, and to the new favouriters and alerters :)**

**I hope you all enjoyed, please let me know what you think! **


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